CSAC Enterprise

The Centre for Social Anthropology and Computing (CSAC) aims to advance 'ordinary' anthropology through the exploration, development and application of computational approaches to research problems across the range of anthropology including the humanities, social sciences and sciences. CSAC is presently part of HRAF Advanced Research Centres (hrafARC), affiliated with the Human Relations Area Files, Yale University.

CSAC Enterprise

Sonia Vougioukalou and Michael Fischer. 2011: Evaluation of early intervention parenting support programmes delivered by Homestart and Canterbury and District Early Years Project, Strategic Health Authority South East, £4,000.

Dave Roberts and Mike Fischer, 2012 Ideas Factory award from Innovations Centre Kent £10000 pounds. Developing an online service to support detecting online wildlife crime. This is being developed further.

Fischer 2011-2013 Executive oversight of the redesign and deployment of the HRAF (Yale) portal for their ethnographic database. Overall HRAF budget US$55,000 for project.

Fischer 2010-11 Consultancies with Stockholm Environment Institute on development of knowledge elicitation and modelling tools. £7000.

Fischer 2010-2011 Work on a framework for UNESCO for creating Pacific Island biodiversity Databases in conjunction with Cook Islands Natural Heritage. Speculative, building on work performed.

Other Enterprise Activities

Ember and Fischer 2014. Established HRAF Advanced Research Centers, Yale. HRAF ARC will develop synergies between comparative blue skies and applied research. HRAF ARC has received its first grant funded by NSF for 950k US$ to investigate disaster recovery across a wide range of cultures.

Bicker and Fischer 2014. Established competition for best SAC student proposal for a development oriented business. Winner will receive £1000 pounds plus legal, accounting and financial services for one year.

Within EU Horizon 2020 we are pursuing two specific areas to develop impact from our past research, headed by Bicker, seeking €5m and €3.8m respectively. These include:

Dec. 2015: Sustainable agriculture: research and innovation focusing upon increasing production-efficiency and coping with climate change towards more sustainable, 'triple performing' types of primary production, which also achieve a more balanced territorial development of our partner's rural areas and their communities than has been possible hitherto.

October 2015: Sustainable food security: research and innovation focusing upon securing a sufficient supply of safe and nutritious food while minimising the related impact on health and the environment. A key aspect within this proposal is the issue of ‘who will do the farming’; i.e., who will actually make this production, and the challenges of knowledge transfer necessary to make such production possible.

Bicker worked with M. Ehsan Ahktar (PIAR) to develop a PG Training institute for Agricultural Research Training in Pakistan, which came to fruition last year. Bicker is now assisting with development of further curricula.Fischer will continue to work with Gerald McCormack of Cook Islands Natural Heritage to extend the Cook Islands Biodiversity and Ethnobiological Data framework to othe Pacific Nations under UNESCO or other sponsorship. The CIBED is used presently by the Cook Islands Governement to manage their compliance to international treaties.

Fischer will continue work with the Stockholm Environment Institute on research using KNeTs to develop policy to reduce vulerability and reduce poverty. A current project examines Livlihoods in the Congo Basin, Cameroon and how people make choices between alternatives available to them. One paper is in press, two book chapters under contract, and other papers planned. These are active policy oriented projects.CSAC public materials on the web remain popular, even past projects such as the Ethnographics Gallery on lucy.